An Open Letter to ALL Designer Toy Artists!

Dear Artists, we all know how it is. You’re crazy busy putting the finishing touches on your custom pieces and/or future releases that the most important things get left to the wayside – like putting together all the clear, timely release details for your fans & your favourite award-winning Designer Toy blogs. We totally get it. That’s why we are here to help you out, cos we’re good like that.

Below we have tried to highlight the very basics we need from you to write a clear & decent post for our readers and your potential customers. Take heed from this information. Apply it to your daily lives to see if this increases your sales, your traffic etc. Before we begin, our email for your releases should be sent to news@thetoychronicle.com – we can distribute emails received much easier to our team of writers, rather than through Facebook Messenger or Instagram DMs etc. Ok so let’s begin….

Link to Store

Probably the most important piece of information we need. Not only do we need it for our post, but your customers need it too. They need to know where to find your release, right? How are they going to buy what you’re selling without this information? For that matter, make sure you have a store to sell from – BigCartel or Shopify are two off the top of our heads. This is the easiest way for customers to find your work. Having the eager customer email you, or message you on social media, allows for £££ to slip away. Customers want it easy. Make it easy for them. You win.

Name of Release

This is important for maaaaany reasons, but firstly it helps The Toy Chronicle pitch your release to our readers. We don’t want to be making up names for your release, this only confuses matters when your customers are trying to find information. Having a name for your release gives us direction. Direction leads to clarity. Clarity leads to sales. You win.

Release Date

A number of times we’ve seen pieces created by an artist, and we’ll try to find a Release Date so we can plan our purchases. Oh no, the Release Date doesn’t exist. We, as customers, are left searching the world wide web for more information, to come up with a blank. It’s frustrating. The ultimate goal at TTC is for us to drive as much revenue towards YOU as possible. Knowing the Release Date will enable us to achieve this. You win.

Price of Release

Allowing customers to know the Price in advance gives them the opportunity to budget for your release. We all know that prices can range from a £10 to £500+, so giving your future customers the chance to find this money in time for your release, means they’ll more than likely have the money for your release. You win.

Pictures

Sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many emails we receive that don’t include the pictures of the artist’s release. Try to take clear pictures of your release, from multiple angles if possible. Yeah, it’s not easy, we know but try to avoid any noise in the background too. We don’t need to see your kitchen kettle & toaster in your shot. We find that we get more engagement on posts based on good photos. More engagement, more sales. You win.

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All of these points should be planned out, we’d suggest a week in advance of your release. Yeah, it’s nice to have secret drops every now & again, but even with a secret drop, you should have an idea of the Name, Price (to some extent*), Release Date and the Link to your Store ready. You can prepare all this information, send it to your favourite Designer Toy Blogs and ask them to hold the information until a agreed date & time – thus making it seem a secret drop for your fan base but also making it easier for Blogs to spread the word to new possible customers. You win.

*With Pricing, don’t forget we had our TTC Presents: PRICING! The Experts Viewpoint post this year to try to give you some food for thought when pricing your work.

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There are a number of other desirable points we would love to receive but are not essential in the greater scheme of things. These help with padding out our posts with additional useful information for your customers. If you can get these to us, great. If not, focus on our five point plan above.

Edition Size

It’s good to understand how many you’re releasing. An Edition size, a Run size. Anything to give us an indication of how attentative your customers need to be at the release time. Do they need to be there bang on the time to grab that one-of-one release, or can they join after their 10 am meeting and still stand a chance of nabbing your artwork on their lunch break?? It all makes a difference.

Social Media Links

We want to find you and tag you in our published posts on our Social Media channels. It also helps our readers to find you too. Pretty much everyone is using Facebook or Twitter or Instagram etc, so make it easy for your potential new fans to find you & follow you. If we have your social media links, we’ll include them in our post. You win. If you don’t have Facebook, Twitter and/or Instagram – get them! These will only prove worthwhile in the long run. Build a solid fanbase on social media and you’ll find your sales will increase – but that’s another story for a different day.

Backstory

It’s great to tell a story. It inspires the imagination of our readers. It gives them a reason to get to know you, as well as understand your release. It’s true that not every release needs a backstory but even just a thought or two behind the reason for your work will work in this situation.

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Build yourself a list of email addresses to the numerous Designer Toy Blogs out there (start with news@thetoychronicle.com obviously) and make a conscious effort to get your Release information out to these blogs on a regular basis. We’ll continue what we do best, but having your help we can make your life easier. If you have four or five Designer Toy Blogs writing about your work with clear details, you’ll reap the benefits of this. You win.

If you guys have any questions or need advice, our ears are always open. Drop us an email at either gary@thetoychronicle.com or andy@thetoychronicle.com and we’ll happily try to do everything we can to help you out.

Hopefully, you find the above information useful? Let us know!

Thanks for listening!

Much love,

Gary & Andy
The Toy Chronicle

#cough